Back to School

Well it's that time of year again. Where the students day dream of the summer that has been and parents rejoice. We are back at school and ready to kick this year off with a bang. Here in the library I'm gearing our first month of school towards the Olympics. Throughout the year the library will have a "theme" or topic that we focus on for about a month. So since the Olympics are going on in Brazil and that is basically all you see on the news these days why not talk about with our kids.

This past month we have learned about the different events that where held and how an athlete competes in them. At the end of the month each class competed in their own Olympics in the library. The kids really enjoyed competing in an academic contest compared to the standard physical contest. I thought I would share one of our favorite competitions, the World Atlas Race. Students where divided up into groups of four and was given a World Atlas. Before the race began we talked about an index and how we use one. I gave each team a worksheet that had a list of the year and city of where the Olympics where held. I wanted them to find the country. We then had the discussion what a country was. The first group to complete the worksheet won. Then after everyone completed the worksheet we went over the answers and where those different countries are in the world. Here is a copy of the worksheet I made.

Olympiad	Year	Host City	Country
I	1896	Athens
II	1900	Paris
III	1904	St Louis
	1906	Athens
IV	1908	London
V	1912	Stockholm
VII	1920	Antwerp
VIII	1924	Paris
IX	1928	Amsterdam
X	1932	Los Angeles
XI	1936	Berlin
XIV	1948	London,
XV	1952	Helsinki
XVI	1956	Melbourne
XVII	1960	Rome
XVIII	1964	Tokyo
XIX	1968	Mexico City
XX	1972	Munich
XXI	1976	Montreal
XXII	1980	Moscow
XXIII	1984	Los Angeles
XXIV	1988	Seoul
XXV	1992	Barcelona
XXVI	1996	Atlanta
XXVII	2000	Sydney
XXVIII	2004	Athens
XXIX	2008	Beijing
XXX	2012	London
XXXI	2016	Rio

Feel free to use this worksheet with your class or your kids at home. The kids really enjoyed learning where all the different Olympics where held. It was a great way to sneak in some other subjects and also learning how to use an index plus reading a map. Any time I can cover a multitude of subjects in one lesson I love too. It really opens up the kids eyes to how things are related and how it is connected to the real world. 

Happy back to school!